Buddha was with us, not the Falgu river

28Sep

After my father’s death, we decided to take his ASTHI to drop it at a holy river. Gaya and the Triveni Sangam of Allahabad are the perfect holy places for us to do the final rituals of our father. Since we have no brothers, so we decided to do it ourselves, my mother, my elder sister Lee and myself. But the final rituals of our grand father and grand mother were yet to be done. To our great surprise, our uncle told us that their ASTHI s were still at our home (we belonged to a joint family). So we must do the jobs for our previous Deceased person before doing the final rituals of our father. Finally we decided to PINDO DAAN of our both grand parents also.

First we did the PINDO DAAN at Gaya, a famous Hindu Holy place in Patna for these sort of jobs. The Bharat Sevashram Sangha helped us in doing this job, they managed one Panda, One Pujari for doing our jobs. The whole function was arranged on the bank of the Falgu river, which was flowing under the ground. According to the Hindu mythology, Sita was cursed to flow like that dry river. It is long story…all the final rituals of a deceased person are done on the bank of this river. The environment of this place was very insecure…it is an unfair truth that the Hindu temples are not peaceful….we can not worship our GOD silently and properly due to the crowded environment and the unfair forceful jobs of the priests. Whatever it is, I think we the HIndu people are quite unlucky in worshiping our Gods. The same thing happened to us at Gaya also. We simply wished to finish our jobs quickly due to the sound polluted and the insecured behaviour of the priests and the Pandas. According to the people, if the fees demanded by the priests at the end of the function would not be given them properly, we can not imagine what would be the situation before us afterwards. Since we people were quite prepared by our well wishers, we simply wished to finish our jobs at the earliest…we even did not get time to drop few teardrops from our eyes to lighten our emotions. We had just lost our father few months back…our pains were still alive at time also. Especially our mother who went herself with us to show her final love and passion for her husband. She might have lots of unspoken things to be shared with her husband, she might think that she would share every emotions, every regrets, every sweet memories spent with her husband at his last funeral. But the environment compelled us to do our jobs at the earliest to save us from the unfair things to be happened on that place.

After a day long program, finally we reached to the BAT BRIKSHA under which tree we had to give up a favorite thing of our life forever in the name of our deceased person after attending the Bishnu temple and other places of Gaya as the part of the program. Finally we arrived at the last stage of our function, the priest asked my mother for the fees of the function which he managed throughout the day. She simply offered him a small amount of money according to our financial condition. The priest genuinely refused to take that amount telling that what could be done with that small amount. My mother simply replied that they could get some water with that amount which is very necessary for a human being to be survived. The people around us simply appreciated her for her reply. We came safely to our ASHRAM at the evening.

At the evening, we started to travel to Budhgaya, the holy place for the Buddhist. We got relaxed in entering the small town just few kilometers away from Gaya. Budhgaya is so silent and peaceful that if a blind man walks around the city he would think that he is the only person present out there. The town was crowded all around, they were mainly the Monks coming from different countries. The only sound could be heard was the sounds of the footsteps of the horses of the Tangas, the comfortable vehicle to roam about the town. Everywhere we could heard the soft sound as “Buddhang Saranang Gacchami” all around instead of the heavy bits of the drums and other instruments of the temples.

After visiting the different Stupas and Budh Vihars we decided to have a seat in the main temple campus. We saw the Monks praying at different places inside the campus, some were praying silently inside the temple, some were meditating under a tree while some were discussing about the life and the philosophy of Buddha. The whole environment was so calm and peaceful that we lost ourselves within us.

Suddenly I noticed that my mother was looking at high, telling someone something unspoken silently. Her teardrops could not motivate her conversations. We simply let her spend some time with that SOMEONE with whom she had been trying to share something during the whole journey..let her remember some moments which she wanted to treasure with her teardrops…